2004 Review

This past year we’ve had the pleasure of participating in some great work with some very special people.

Our thanks to all the people and organizations we’ve had the opportunity to work with in 2004! We wish you and yours peace and harmony in 2005.

Here’s a brief recap of some of our activities during this last year:

Ongoing Projects


We started out the year supporting Bell Canada’s proposal to provide telecommunications services for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. Bell was awarded the contract in October 2004, and we’re working with them to plan the next 5 years leading up to the Olympics.

Our relationship with the Aerospace Techology Working Group continued throughtout the year. We manage and maintain their web site (www.atwg.org) and added more facilitation support in both their spring and fall 2004 conferences and we’re planning the spring 2005 conference. The spring conference focused on returning to space with peace and hope while the fall conference focused on supporting the space exploration vision. The collaborative part of the fall event focused on creating a sustained presence on the moon.

In 2003 we did some work for NASA Dryden focused on developing a vision for an Global (Earth) Observation System. 2004 found us expanding on that work by designing and facilitating several collaborative sessions bringing together members of NASA, NOAA and the DoE to explore using UAVs (unmanned aerospace vehicles) for global climate change research. The first workshop in August focused on developing science goals. In the second workshop in December brought together a broader community to expand on those science goals as well as looking at the existing technology gaps in current UAV technology.

During 2004 we had the opportunity to continue our work with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Center for Working Familes. This has been a several year project to develop a program to streamline products and services for low income families.

We are very pleased to welcome Mike Kent to InnovationLabs. He recently sold his first project into Yahoo and we’re looking forward to a long and healthy relationship with them.

Collaborative Events with Educators


We also had the opportunity to support a handful of educators from around the country in some great projects. We began the year working with four small schools in Santa Cruz. The district was facing severe budget cuts and these 4 small schools had to plan what eventually became the The Branciforte Small Schools Campus (with all 4 schools sharing of one campus). Later in the year Langdon worked with the Santa Cruz City Schools leadership team and facilitated their annual retreat before starting the new school year.

During the year we did several projects in and around the Milwaukee, Wisconsin area. In February we worked with a small group from the Milwaukee Academy of Science to help them design a new high school. This new school was to be co-located with a local science museum. The high school opened in September with it’s first class of 30 students. In July we worked with the New Berlin School District (a small district outside of Milwaukee) to design a comprehensive roadmap to a new assessment system for the district. And in December we worked with our friends at Cardinal Stritch University Leadership Center. This project involved designing and facilitating a fantastic group of African American leaders focused on improving economic conditions for African Americans in the city of Milwaukee.

During the year we also had the great opportunity to work with the State of Nebraska Department of Education as they begin their process of transforming career and technical education throughout the state. That relationship developed out of work we did with the National FFA Organization. We worked with National FFA to explore business models and plan the expansion of their LifeKnowledge product to be used in schools throughout the US.

Workshops


During the year we facilitated several workshops. We continued our relationship with the CapGemini Accelerated Solutions Environment and conducted our third workshop on Designing Collaborative Events. We also delivered this workshop and a workshop on visual modeling and StoryMaps to our friends at Bell Canada’s Delta Centre. And, to finish up the year Langdon worked with InnovationLabs’ Resident Associate for South Asia Avnindra Sharma to develop, produce and deliver, three workshops in India. These workshops combined work Langdon has done on Business Model Warfare with new work we are all doing on Innovation and High Performance.

All in all it was a great year and we’re looking forward to a great 2005.

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